Small Business Statistics for 2027: Official US and UK Numbers in One Place

Here in America, most small businesses have no employees at all. The government's own numbers show it: there are about 36 million small businesses, and only around 6.4 million of them have paid staff, so the rest are people working for themselves. Think of a bookkeeper in a spare room, an electrician who drives a van, or an online seller who sells from the kitchen table. Many people hear "small business" and imagine a storefront with a few workers behind the counter, and that picture leaves out most of the economy.

We put this page together for owners, writers and anyone who has to make a case to a bank, a client or a team. Each figure was published by a government office or a non-profit research group, and each one links back to the original. We've sorted them by what they mean when you run a business: how many of you there are, how customers buy, how technology is changing things, and what you can do about it.

Small business statistics at a glance

How many small businesses are there?

About 36.2 million in the U.S., according to the SBA's Office of Advocacy. That's 99.9% of all American businesses. Around 6.4 million of them have paid employees, and together small businesses employ about 62.3 million people, which is 45.9% of U.S. employees.

These figures come from the annual Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business report that the SBA Office of Advocacy publishes. For economy-wide statistics, firms with fewer than 500 employees all count as small. That's far wider than the way most people use the word, so keep it in mind when you read headlines, because a manufacturer with 400 people and a design studio with one person are both counted.

The counts rest on Census data that lags by a few years, so what they show is the economy as it stood a little before the report came out. They change slowly enough that this rarely alters the picture, but if you quote them, cite the report by name instead of saying "this year".

For a small business owner, almost every competitor is small too. You're rarely up against a giant for local customers. You're up against the business down the road, and whichever one is easier to find online usually wins.

How much selling has moved online?

Quite a lot, and the share keeps growing. U.S. online sales reached $340.2 billion in the Census Bureau's most recent quarterly estimate, or 17.1% of all retail, which is 12.2% above the same period a year earlier. Across Great Britain, the ONS says online sales make up 28.8% of retail, nearly three pounds of every ten spent.

In its latest quarter, the Census Bureau's quarterly e-commerce report put online sales at $340.2 billion, seasonally adjusted. That's 3.8% above the previous quarter and 12.2% higher than the matching quarter of the year before. For Great Britain, the Office for National Statistics gave 28.8% for the share of retail sales made online in the most recent monthly release.

Businesses that never sell online still feel this, because people research online and then buy in person. Before calling a dentist, a plumber or a wedding venue, a family compares websites, reviews and profiles. So a local trade needs a website people can find and a Business Profile just as much as an online shop does. Our ecommerce statistics page covers online selling in more depth.

How many small businesses use AI?

According to the Census Bureau's survey, around one in five U.S. businesses uses AI for at least one business function. Bigger firms use it much more than small ones: firms that have 250 or more employees come in at 37%, while fewer than 20% of those with four or fewer employees use it.

In the Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey, firms say whether AI is part of any business function. Between December 2025 and early May, overall use stayed between 17% and 20%. The difference by firm size is plain, and our page on AI adoption statistics breaks it down.

Time is the bigger barrier than money, because most useful AI tools are cheap or free, while a small firm's owner is usually also the marketer, the bookkeeper and the receptionist. The ones that see a payoff usually pick a single repetitive task first, like drafting replies to reviews, and grow from there.

How do customers reach small businesses?

Most of them arrive through a smartphone. In the U.S., 91% of adults own one, and UK adults spend about four and a half hours a day online, mostly on smartphones. A customer will often search, compare reviews and make a call from that one device within a few minutes.

• 91% of adults in the U.S. have a smartphone, and 98% own some kind of cellphone, according to the Pew Research Center.
• Ofcom reports that UK adults spend about four and a half hours a day online, 10 minutes more than the year before, and most of that is on a smartphone.
• Setting up a Google Business Profile costs nothing, and Google says you can claim or add your business at no charge.

Combine them and the typical small business funnel looks like this: someone searches on a phone, looks over a map listing along with its reviews, then taps to call or taps through to your website. All of it happens on a small screen, and you can lose the customer at any step.

What about business survival?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks it in official survival tables, which show how many private sector establishments opened in a given year are still operating later, nationally, by industry and by state. When a survival rate appears with no source attached, compare it with the BLS business employment dynamics tables.

This page quotes no survival percentage at all, since the rate depends a lot on the year a business opened and on its industry, and one headline figure hides those differences. If you're writing a business plan, look up your industry and your state in the BLS tables instead. That gives you a more honest and useful picture than any national average does.

How to use these numbers in a business plan or pitch

Statistics help most when they back a particular decision, and a few habits make them work harder.

Quote the source and the period, not just the number. The line "The Census Bureau's latest quarterly estimate puts online sales at 17.1% of U.S. retail" persuades far more than "online is huge", because your reader can check it.

Match the statistic to your market. A café owner in Manchester gets more from the British online retail share than from a U.S. figure. A contractor should care less about national averages than about the local area and trade.

Pair a big number with your own small one. "Most UK time online is on a smartphone, and 70% of our own website visits last quarter came from phones" ties the national trend to your own situation. (Take the second half from your own analytics, and treat the 70% there as an example only.)

Don't stack percentages from different surveys. Don't add or compare two figures that were measured on different groups in different years, even when they seem related.

A one-week online setup for a new small business

Whether you're just starting out or have traded for years with little online presence, here's a realistic first week, and none of it costs anything.

• Day 1: Claim your Google Business Profile and verify it. Pick the primary category that fits best, then fill in your opening hours, your phone number and the area you serve.
• Day 2: Upload real photos of the premises, the team and finished work, and write a plain description saying what you do and where.
• Day 3: Open your website on your own phone using mobile data. If a visitor can't spot your phone number within two seconds, fix that before anything else.
• Day 4: Add the business to two or three directories you trust, using precisely the phone number, address and name from your Google profile.
• Day 5: Send your direct review link to your last ten customers and ask each for an honest review.
• Day 6: Set up Google Analytics and Search Console, and mark form submissions and call-button taps as key events.
• Day 7: Pick three numbers to check each month and write them down: calls, form enquiries and direction requests on your Business Profile.

It's groundwork rather than a full marketing strategy, though every strategy depends on it, and many long-established businesses still haven't done it.

Figures you'll see elsewhere that we left out

You'll often see survey figures on pages about small business statistics, such as how many owners work weekends, how many have a website, or the main reasons startups fail. Software companies and lenders run many of these surveys, often on small or unclear samples, and for some figures we never found where they began. They can make for interesting reading, but you wouldn't want one in a loan application. Everything in this page's table is official, and each figure links to the organisation behind it.

What the numbers mean for a small business owner

Small firms are almost all of the economy, yet they have to win attention on a thin budget and even less time. The numbers suggest a short list of low-cost things that pay off:

1. Claim your free profiles first. Start with your Google Business Profile, then add a few trusted directories. Use the same phone number, name and address everywhere.
2. Make the website fast and simple on a phone. Show the main action and phone number first, at the very top. Run the site through our free website analysis and you'll see what's dragging it down.
3. Ask every customer for a review. Reviews count toward Google's local rankings and put the next customer at ease.
4. Measure from day one. With a simple small business KPI dashboard you can see which channel brings in customers, instead of working from a hunch.
5. Try AI on one job. Good jobs are first drafts, replies to customers and summaries of their questions, and a person should read all of it before it's sent.

Our small business marketing strategies page explains how we work, if you'd like a plan shaped for your own market.

Sources and method

If you want newer numbers, follow the source links, because "latest" means the most recent release when this was written. We checked each figure against its source. The data comes from the SBA Office of Advocacy, the U.S. Census Bureau (its quarterly e-commerce report and the Business Trends and Outlook Survey), the UK Office for National Statistics, Ofcom, Pew Research Center and Google.